What's in the crystal ball?

I got an email from Ora from New York who, instead of just speculating like I always do (remember I am a theoretical physicist! :-), has actually called up Indevus, the owner of Pagoclone, again and asked whether the trials will move to Phase III stage: see his first call. Not sure I learned anything new, but here is his summary:

She reported, there really isn’t much of an update since we last spoke [in December]: We’re still in partnership discussions and we’re still optimistic. The last time we spoke, I expected that we’d have something finished by end-of-year, but of course the problem with offering a timeline is that things always take longer than you hope, never shorter.
She said: We’ve been talking with more than one company. I said, this apparently means that the discussions are not as far along as I had previously optimistically assumed. She said: Well, it’s actually possible to have discussions with multiple companies simultaneously which are in a late stage; it’s not uncommon to do so, because there can be snags with one company and you don’t want to start over. All along we’ve been in discussions with multiple companies. We still consider this an important asset for our company and we want to get it into good hands to maximize its value to our shareholders. As previously reported, we don’t want to develop it ourselves because it’s outside of the core competency for our company.
I asked, what’s the status of the Phase II trials? She said, Phase II has ended, except for the open label phase; participants were given the option to continue; we’re still continuing to monitor. Anecdotal reports continue to be favorable.
I said, I keep looking for a scientific article. She said, actually we’ve submitted to a couple of different journals. But publication is not up to us, it’s up to the journal and their sense of the importance of the results. We’d like to have it published because it’s good publicity for us...The journals tend to be more interested in Phase III results because it’s closer to becoming a reality.